Dr. Tony Gordon, PhD

Tony Gordon has over 15 years of commercial experience focusing on human genetic testing, working with IVF clinics and hospitals to provide the best possible testing options for their patients. Tony’s PhD was in understanding chromosomal changes in cancer via arrayCGH, a very new technology in the field at the time, before becoming a registered clinical scientist and researcher specializing in molecular cytogenetics. Tony joined BlueGnome in 2006 and utilizing his clinical background and testing knowledge, rapidly helped BlueGnome move their testing products and customers to new level including managing key collaborations with respected molecular cytogeneticists in the field. With a constant thirst for technology and applications, Tony was ideally placed to see how the existing BlueGnome technology could be improved and adapted to meet the needs of the IVF community to provide a much better solution to pre-implantation genetic screening of all 24 chromosomes utilizing robust arrayCGH combined with the new methods of whole genome amplification resulting in 24sure. In September 2012, Tony left BlueGnome to become the commercial director of Genesis Genetics and head of UK clinical operations. Not content with rapidly growing the PGS business, in 2014 Genesis was one of the first laboratories in the world to introduce the new universal PGD technology karyomapping. Tony is always looking for the best way to improve testing and evaluate technology potential for the benefit of patients.

Title of Presentation

Clinical utility of expanded carrier screening via Next Generation Sequencing

Rapidly evolving technology has allowed carrier screening to identify a broader number of diseases. Several studies have shown that massively parallel next‐generation DNA sequencing (NGS) technology has had a profound effect on the clinical utility of expanded carrier screening. Whilst most traditional carrier screening assays will only identify the most common mutations within a gene, NGS allows highly accurate detection of a significantly larger number of alleles. We will present the clinical utility of expanded carrier screening via Next Generation Sequencing and discuss the future of this field.